6.  The applicants are spouses. They were born in 1968 and 1965 respectively and live in Donetsk. The first applicant is a lawyer practising in Ukraine. He is the President of the law firm Pravis, subsequently renamed Golovan and Partners.
7.  The applicants are the co-owners of a flat which, at the material time, was used by the first applicant as his office. The deed of ownership was issued in the name of the second applicant.
8.  In February and April 2005 the first applicant entered into legal services agreements with a company, K. Under those agreements K. transferred to the first applicant certain documents concerning its commercial activity.
9.  On 4 April 2005 the investigator of the Slovyansk Tax Office instituted criminal proceedings against the officials of company K. for alleged tax evasion and forgery of documents.
10.  On 19 April 2005 the investigator issued a search warrant for K.’s documents in the office of the first applicant. The warrant was approved by the Prosecutor of Kramatorsk. In the reasoning part of the search warrant the investigator noted that it had been established in the course of pre-trial investigation that a number of bookkeeping, tax accounting and other documents had been stored at the first applicant’s law office.
11.  The warrant authorised the search and seizure of the following material:
“contractual documents, bookkeeping documents, primary and summary accounting documents, tax accounting and other documents which concern the relationships between [K.] and [company D.] as regards the delivery of electricity by the latter to the former company in the period from 1 January 2001 to date; decisions and other procedural documents issued in the same period by the commercial courts when dealing with disputes between the two companies.”
12.  On 5 May 2005 the investigator, the tax police officers, and two attesting witnesses arrived at the first applicant’s office to carry out the search. The first applicant objected to the search. He stated that the flat was private property and, accordingly, any search of it could be carried out only on the basis of a court decision, as required by Article 177 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. He further stated that the documents requested by the investigator had been entrusted to him by K. in his capacity as the company’s lawyer and, by virtue of section 10 of the Bar Act, could not be seized without his consent.
13.  The investigator ignored the first applicant’s objections and commenced the search. In the course of the search a number of K.’s documents, including some dated before 2001, were seized.
14.  The two attesting witnesses countersigned the search report compiled by the investigator. The witnesses were born in 1984 and at the relevant time were studying at the Donbas Machinery Building Academy. Subsequently, in the course of “pre-investigation” enquiries, the two witnesses confirmed that the first applicant repeatedly informed the investigator that the searched premises were the individuals’ private property.
15.  On 6 May 2005 the seized documents were attached to the criminal case file as material evidence.
16.  On 2 August 2005 the decision of 4 April 2005 instituting criminal proceedings against the officials of company K. was quashed as unfounded.
17.  On 6 and 11 May 2005 the applicants complained to several prosecutors’ offices at various levels about the search of their premises. They requested that criminal proceedings be instituted against those who had carried out the search.
18.  On 25 May and 8 July 2005, 23 February, 4 April and 25 August 2006, 23 March and 15 June 2007, 28 March, 5 September and 3 October 2008, 20 April 2009, 19 March, 9 April and 9 August 2010 and 4 March 2011 the prosecutor’s offices adopted decisions refusing to open criminal proceedings against the investigator and the police officers involved in the search. According to those decisions there was no indication that criminal offences under Articles 162, 364, 365, and 397 of the Criminal Code had been committed. The latest decision specified in particular that at the time of the search the flat had been used as business premises, while the documents had been seized as evidence in the criminal case and therefore could not be covered by the lawyer-client privilege.
19.  All those decisions were quashed as unfounded, either by the supervising prosecutor or by the court. In quashing the impugned decisions the supervising authorities relied on the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure requiring preliminary court authorisation for the search of an individual’s premises and on those of the Bar Act safeguarding the professional secrecy afforded to lawyers.
20.  In particular, on 27 December 2011 the Voroshylovskyy District Court of Donetsk, quashing the prosecutor’s decision of 4 March 2011 refusing to open criminal proceedings, found that the prosecutor’s office had failed to take into account the fact that the searched flat was owned by private individuals and that, pursuant to domestic legislation, any search of it could be carried out only on the basis of a court decision. Besides, the materials of the enquiries suggested that the seized documents had been entrusted to the first applicant in the course of his activity as a lawyer and had been covered by lawyer-client privilege. The court therefore concluded that the search and the seizure of documents had been carried out unlawfully. The court remitted the case for additional “pre-investigation” enquiries, for the adoption of the proper decision under Article 97 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
21.  On 23 January 2012 the Court of Appeal upheld that decision of the first-instance court, adding that the investigative authorities had not yet examined whether the investigator had seized documents which had no relevance to the criminal case against the officials of company K.